


Chicago, 1968

by dsa_archivist



Category: due South
Genre: Drama, Episode Related, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2000-02-26
Updated: 2000-02-26
Packaged: 2018-11-10 19:05:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11132886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dsa_archivist/pseuds/dsa_archivist
Summary: Forgiveness is impossible to find when 22 year-old patrollman Harding Welsh, his father and his brother are caught up in the Chicago riots of 1968.





	Chicago, 1968

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Speranza, the archivist: this story was once archived at [Due South Archive](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Due_South_Archive). To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in June 2017. I tried to reach out to all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Due South Archive collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/duesoutharchive).

Chicago 1968

Disclaimer: Harding and Wilson Welsh belong to Alliance Communications. All other characters are my own invention. Although this story is based on actual historical events, no character in this story is intended to represent any real person, living or dead.

Acknowledgments: I would like to thank Paul Quarrington for creating such a vivid tale of family tension, and for leaving those tensions unresolved at the end of "Doctor Longball." I also want to thank my beta readers, Jo March, Vicki West, and Magnes, for their valuable contributions, and all my friends on the RideForever list for their patience and encouragement.

Undercover is lonely, and so is writing. Please let me know what you thought of my story; even a flung otter shows that you care!

Melanie.m@erols.com

 

****

Chicago, 1968

Melanie Mitchell

To Americans of a certain age, these words are much more than just a city and a year. They are a watershed, a moment when the structure of society collapsed in a cloud of tear gas and fear; a time when free speech was a brick, and justice was a billy club. 

In the midst of the chaos stood twenty-two year old patrolman Harding Welsh, a young man caught between tradition and change, striving to do the right thing on a night when every good decision was wrong.

*******************

****

Chapter One

"Harding?"

Harding Welsh groaned at the sound of his younger brother's voice, and ducked his head under the shower to rinse out the shampoo. As the stream of tepid water played across his scalp and face, he tried to remember why he had thought it a good idea to give Wilson a key to his apartment; it was for emergencies, of course, but Wilson seemed to think it was an open invitation to drop by any time. 

Wilson rapped on the bathroom door. "Harding, you in there?" 

"Nothing gets past you, does it?" Harding yelled loudly enough to be heard over the sound of the shower. He turned his back to the spray one last time, and ran his fingers through his hair to check for any remaining suds. He was reluctant to turn the water off, because the shower was the coolest spot in the apartment on a steamy August morning. Not for long though, because a loud "thunk" in the pipes warned him of an impending change in water pressure--somebody downstairs must have flushed a toilet. He quickly shut off the water before he could be scalded, and reached around the orange plastic shower curtain for his towel.

He wasn't happy that the Democrats had chosen Chicago for their '68 national convention, but at least the extra 12-hour shifts meant lots of overtime pay for a cop. After payday he'd have enough money to buy a window-mounted air conditioner at Sears' Labor Day sale, and long tepid showers would be a thing of the past.

As he toweled off, he noted his reflection in the bathroom mirror. A few weeks short of his twenty-third birthday, he was at his physical peak-- tall and broad, just a hair under 200 pounds and none of it fat. His dark brown hair was trimmed conservatively short, showing just a hint of its natural wave. His mouth tended to be firm and tight-lipped, but his deep-set blue eyes often twinkled in direct disagreement with his most serious expressions. Like his grandfather, his father and his brothers, he was born to be a cop. 

"Harding? You okay in there?" 

He wrapped the damp towel around his waist and yanked the bathroom door open. "What's your hurry?" he barked. "You got a date or something? 'Cause I didn't invite you and I don't want to stop you if you got somewhere more important to be."

The baby of the Welsh family at twenty-one, Wilson got his cherubic looks from their mother's side of the family. His hair was straight and fair, and he was half a foot shorter than Harding. He grinned apologetically. "Wanna beer?"

"Yeah." 

Wilson headed over to Harding's galley-style kitchen, and pulled two bottles of Pabst from the tiny refrigerator. He popped the tops with the bottle-opener attached to the underside of the cabinet beside the fridge. At the same time, Harding pulled on a clean pair of boxers and an undershirt, and dropped the towel on the sill of the open window. Not a breath of air was stirring there; he turned on his oscillating fan and made a conscious choice not to finish getting dressed yet.

As Wilson walked past the small dining table, he wrinkled his nose at his brother's uniform shirt, which was draped across the back of one of the worn wooden chairs. "What's that smell?" he asked, as he handed one of the bottles to his brother.

Harding scooped the shirt up and tossed it into a laundry hamper beside the bathroom door. "It's piss, you moron."

"Piss? What do you mean, piss?"

"Some goddamn hippie threw a water-balloon full of warm pee at me last night. All right?"

Wilson let out a soft whistle. "Not all right."

Harding grunted, then took a long swig from his beer. As he swallowed, he held the cool glass bottle against his forehead. "It's ten-thirty on a Wednesday morning, Wilson. Why aren't you in class?" 

"Academy's not in session this week. I guess all the instructors were needed down at the convention site, so we get a little vacation."

"Lucky cadets. For the rest of us, we got mandatory twelve-hour shifts, no time off, and all vacations cancelled. In August! Damn this stupid convention." 

Wilson started to speak, then paused and had another swallow of beer instead. A long awkward silence settled between them as they drank. But soon the bottles were empty, and Wilson gave a gentle cough.

Harding looked up sharply. He knew his younger brother's cues; there was something weighing on Wilson's mind but he couldn't bring himself to begin. He needed a push. "You didn't come all the way here just to drink my beer."

"No."

"So what is it?"

Wilson didn't answer in words; instead, he pulled the right sleeve of his white t-shirt up to expose an angry purple bruise that extended in a wide stripe from his shoulder halfway to his elbow. The sight of it called up something primal in Harding's thoughts. "Who did that to you?"

"Hell if I know." Wilson pressed his lips together, trying to contain his anger. "One of my Brothers in Blue, apparently."

"A cop?"

"A cop? He was wearing the uniform, but you know what? He wasn't wearing a badge. None of them was wearing a badge. There were dozens of 'em, whaling around right and left with their nightsticks, and not one of 'em was wearing a goddamn badge." 

Wilson's words evoked Harding's memory of the night before. "You were there? Last night, in Lincoln Park? With the demonstrators?" Incredulous, Harding lashed out at his brother. "Jesus H. Christ, Wilson, are you out of your mind? You're a month away from graduating from the Academy. What the hell were you doing in Lincoln Park?"

Wilson matched Harding's stare and answered him with defiant patience. "I was exercising my Constitutional right to assemble peacefully, to petition my government for a redress of grievances," he recited.

"What's happening in Lincoln Park isn't a peaceful assembly. It's a mob of dirty, pot-smoking rich kids who've got nothing better to do with their lives than spit on the political process. They were dangerous, throwing bricks and bottles at anybody in a uniform, and they had no permit to be in that park after dark!"

"We just want to be heard! We're trying to send a serious message about the war in Vietnam."

"By nominating a pig for president?"

Wilson snorted. "Pigasus? Harding, Pigasus is a joke. A. . . you know, a satire. Political satire, like. They're trying to make a joke about politics."

"Goddamn pig almost took a piece outta me!" Harding pulled up his undershirt to reveal his own bruise, green and blue across the left side of his stomach, ending just above his navel. The center of the bruise was distinguished by a neat line of red teeth-marks. 

"Pigasus did that to you?"

Harding yanked the shirt down again. "Don't you dare try to tell me that pig is a joke!"

"It's the Yippies who have the pig, Harding. I'm not a Yippie, I'm with the McCarthy supporters." He spread his arms wide. "I'm Clean for Gene!"

"Clean for Gene." All the frustration of the week boiled over at that moment, and Harding laid it all out on his brother. "You want to be part of the political process? Fine! Do it on Election Day; throw your vote away on McCarthy. Vote for the fuckin' pig if that's what you want! But if anybody finds out that you were part of that protest, your can kiss your career with the Chicago P.D. goodbye. Hell, if Pop finds out, you can kiss you ass goodbye."

"So. . . what? What? Because I'm a cadet, I have to give up my right of free speech? Because I'm Art Welsh's son, I can't have my own opinion? Because I'm your brother, I can't stand up for what I believe?" 

Harding lashed out, "Because you're Grant Welsh's brother, you don't go saluting the flag of the goddamn Viet Cong!"

Wilson rocked back, stunned. "Is that what you think of me? I participate peacefully in an anti-war demonstration, in support of a legitimate candidate for the presidency, and this is how you judge me? Tell me something, Harding: How many McCarthy supporters did you swing your stick at last night?"

"You listen to me, Wilson Welsh--stay the hell away from the goddamn protest!" 

"Thanks for the beer," Wilson said quietly, and set his empty bottle on the table as he turned to leave. He paused at the door, and turned back. "You know what I don't understand? Why weren't they wearing their badges?"

Harding had no answer for that. He stared in resentful silence, as Wilson slipped out and closed the door behind him. Alone in his tiny apartment, Welsh remembered the chaos in Lincoln Park--the caustic smell of tear gas mixed with marijuana and tobacco smoke; the crush of bodies, some fleeing, some fighting, others sitting limply on the ground; the sound of untrained voices singing off-key, "We shall overco-o-o-ome, we shall overco-o-o-ome, we shall overcome someda-a-a-a-a-ay. . . ." He recalled the taunts, the spitting, the bottles and bricks flying around; the hot, wet impact of the piss-filled balloon on his back, and the laughter of the Yippies who scrambled away as soon as it hit. Worst of all, he remembered the humiliation of being knocked down and mauled by that monstrous pig.

He walked over to the chair where he had left his pants, and slipped his hand into the right-hand pocket. As he pulled his badge from the pocket, the sharp point of the pin sank into his thumb and drew blood.

In just a few hours he would be back on duty, facing that mob again. 

*******************

****

Chapter Two

"You're way outta line, Welsh!"

The air in the lieutenant's office was thick with the smell of sweat and stale cigarette smoke. Lt. Molloy was standing so close that Harding could see the thin edge of his toupee where the glue was starting to come loose, and smell garlic and salami on his breath. He stood smart at attention and held his ground while the lieutenant made his point. 

"This department is responsible for the safety of thousands of delegates from all fifty states, as well as the President and Vice President of the United States and every other bigshot Democrat in the country." Molloy paused long enough to light an unfiltered Camel, then continued his lecture while exhaling smoke in Harding's face. "This department is also responsible for the safety of the citizens of the great city of Chicago. This department is not responsible for helping a crowd of anarchists, communists and pot-heads trash the good name of the United States of America! Do you understand me?

"Yes sir, but. . . . "

"But, what?" 

Harding wondered what streak of foolish courage wouldn't let him keep his peace. The lieutenant was right; he was way out of line. The smart thing to do right now would be to shut up, turn around, and head on down to roll-call while he still had some shred of dignity left. He swallowed, then cleared his throat, trying to remember that eighteen years earlier this man had been his father's first partner. "With all due respect, sir, the strategy stinks."

"What did you just say?" the lieutenant demanded, his voice rising in both pitch and volume, as his round face took on a distinctive brick red hue. 

"I said," Harding heard himself say, "the strategy stinks. Sir."

"Does it?" Harding spun around at the new voice. In the doorway stood Capt. Harrison, tall and distinguished with his aquiline nose, jutting chin, and shock of white hair. He was in his full dress uniform, white gloves tucked into his belt; Harding realized that he must have just come back from reporting to Mayor Daley at the convention hall. The captain walked around the scarred wooden desk, and took his seat in the lieutenant's leather chair. "Molloy, who is this officer?"

"Harding Welsh, sir." Molloy flashed Welsh a look that told him that there was going to hell to pay. "He's Art Welsh's son."

"Is he? All right then, Officer Harding Welsh, you say the strategy stinks. Would you care to elucidate?" 

"Lincoln Park." Harding tried to organize his thoughts, hoping he could talk his way out of this mess. "You got upwards of ten thousand protesters in there. You got hippies, Yippies, communists, anarchists, agitators, spectators. . . hell, some of those kids only showed up 'cause they wanted to hear Peter, Paul and Mary sing. They're all hanging out in Lincoln Park, which is miles away from the convention hall. Yeah, they're making a hell of mess, but they are making that mess inside the park, a park which is surrounded by residential neighborhoods and Lake Michigan." 

As three days of exhaustion and stress crystallized into a moment of frightening clarity, Harding realized with absolute certainty what should have been done. His voice faltered for a moment, but then the words began to flow faster. "The sun goes down, and we move in with tear gas and mace and nightsticks. Why? We gotta get the protesters outta the park. Tell me something." He watched the captain's face for any sign of comprehension, but Harrison stared back at him blankly, his fingertips steepled in front of his face. 

"Tell me something," he repeated. "Where are ten thousand protesters supposed to go? Did we think they would just disappear? No, they're going to head out into the streets around the park. Ten thousand kids! They block traffic, they make noise, they're a nuisance! Only now they're a now they're a disorganized, resentful, spread-out nuisance milling around in the residential side streets of Old Town. And we're right behind them. Gotta get them to shut up, gotta get them off the streets, gotta get them gone. Cops are wandering through the neighborhood streets, looking for enemies. They're clubbing anybody who's not wearing a uniform!"

Lt. Molloy interrupted. "Hardy, you know as well as anybody that the protesters brought this on themselves."

Harding winced at the lieutenant's use of his childhood nickname, but didn't let it faze him. "You know something? It's hard to distinguish between a protester and an ordinary citizen who just happened to be walking home. Never mind that it's impossible to distinguish between the protesters who were throwing bricks and the ones who were peaceful!"

Molloy exploded. "Don't give me that 'peaceful protesters' bullshit. You don't think they wanted this? They came here with detailed plans, with every intention of provoking violence, so they could play up to the press."

"And that makes it okay? It's okay to go around bashing demonstrators, because their leaders planned it to happen that way? We're playing right into their hands!" Welsh couldn't believe that the lieutenant could be so blind. "We look like the goddamn Soviets invading Prague, and they come across like Martin Luther King!"

Harrison cleared his throat. Harding broke off and looked warily at the captain, who had leaned back in the lieutenant's chair and placed his spit-shined-black size twelve shoes on the center of the desk. Observant by nature and by training, Harding noted with detachment that the captain's shoes were quite new, the leather soles barely scuffed. At the same time, Harrison was coolly observing the earnest Harding Welsh, who had suddenly lost all his eloquence and momentum.

"How old are you, Welsh?" he asked.

"Twenty-two." That wasn't the question he had expected. 

"And how long have you been on the force?"

"Nineteen months."

Harrison nodded slowly. "The enthusiasm of youth is a valuable thing. Harding, I've known your father for almost fifteen years. He's a good man, and I'm cutting you some slack because you're his son. But we are not paying you to second-guess your orders."

"No sir."

"Nor do I approve of my men bypassing the chain-of-command."

Harding stood even straighter, realizing with dread that he was about to have his ass handed to him. "No sir."

"So this is what's going to happen." The captain removed his feet from the desk and stood. "And I mean right now. You're going to go home, and you're going to give some heavy thought to your place in this department."

Molloy spoke quietly to the captain. "Sir, his shift's about to start."

"No it's not. He's suspended, forty-eight hours. No pay." Harrison looked back at Harding with disdain. "I can't trust an officer on the street tonight who doesn't trust his orders."

Harding saw his opportunity slipping away. "Sir, the men on the streets aren't wearing their stars. Neither are the sergeants. If they really believed that they were doing the right thing, why would they be taking off their identification?"

Molloy sputtered, "That is not true. That is a malicious rumor being spr. . . ."

"It's true! The word came around from man to man. Without the number on the star, or the name-plate, nobody can prove who does what to who. Nobody can. . . ."

"No member of the Chicago Police Department would be ashamed to wear his shield! Are you?" Harrison punched Harding's silver star-shaped badge with one finger. "Do you want to continue to wear this shield?"

"Yes sir."

"Then get the hell out of this building while you still have it."

Lt. Molloy opened the office door for him; Harding knew he had been beat. He turned on one heel and walked out into the squad room with dignity and gravity. The door slammed behind him.

The squad room fell silent. Harding crossed the silent room without a word, under the stares of his friends, his colleagues, his partner. As he reached the door, a single voice called out.

"Hey, Welsh! How's your belly where the pig bit ya?"

Their raucous laughter rang in his ears as he left the building.

*******************

****

Chapter Three

Harding popped the top off a beer bottle and took a long chug. He checked before he closed the refrigerator door, and saw that there were five bottles left--enough to get him pretty well plastered before the night was through. He pulled off his uniform shirt and hung it over a chair, then drew his nightstick and dropped it on the table beside his pale-blue helmet. 

Suspended! Two days without pay, right in the middle of a week-long citywide security crisis. By order of Mayor Daley all vacations and leave had been cancelled and every cop in the city was working mandatory overtime, but he'd just been sent home like a naughty schoolboy! As he opened the window and turned on the little fan to stir the sultry August air, he laughed at the irony--his Sears window-mounted air conditioner had just become another victim of the riots. 

Maybe six beers wouldn't be enough.

He opened a can of Campbell's vegetable soup and dumped the contents into a saucepan, then added a canful of water. That went on the smaller burner of his two-burner stove to heat. He then assembled a "Dagwood Bumstead" sandwich on one of his three dinner plates, using just about every ingredient in the fridge that wasn't either spoiled or moldy. A double-handful of potato chips and a dill pickle spear rounded out the meal. He tossed a blue tea-towel onto the table and put the saucepan of hot soup on it; eating his soup directly from the pot meant one less dish to wash. He finished off the first bottle of beer and opened a second bottle to have with his supper.

He turned on the TV, and adjusted the rabbit ears to the best position for bringing in Channel 4. David Brinkley was reporting from the NBC booth at the convention, commenting on a nomination speech that apparently had just ended. Harding took another swig of beer and sat down to eat his supper and watch another politician nominate Vice President Humphrey for President of the United States of America.

By the time the speech ended, Harding was wiping up the last of the soup with the crust from his sandwich. Up in the NBC booth, Brinkley turned to the camera and for the first time described what was going on outside the convention hall, in the streets of Chicago.

The anti-war demonstrations had moved. After three disastrous days in Lincoln Park, the leaders of the Youth International Party had finally got wise and moved their followers south to the more strategically placed Grant Park. The rest of the mob followed the Yippies. All day long they had been singing, dancing, chanting, listening to speeches and music in the park that graced the lakeshore beside Chicago's famous Loop, less than a mile from the convention center and only blocks from the big hotels where the delegates were staying. 

Only blocks from the Conrad Hilton, where Vice President Humphrey was staying.

Harding glanced over his shoulder at the open window. The sun was low in the sky, almost an hour before dusk. He rushed over to his desk and dug rapidly through a pile of unpaid bills, advertising circulars and newspapers, searching for his AAA map of the city. He found it among his bank statements, and swept the remains of his supper out of the way so he could spread the map out on the table.

Grant Park. A mile and a quarter of premium lakeshore real estate. The Chicago Art Institute. The Shedd Aquarium. The Chicago Yacht Club. The Buckingham Fountain. The park was isolated from the magnificence of downtown Chicago by the subterranean Illinois Central Railroad tracks, which were crossed by grand ceremonial bridges at only five places: Roosevelt, Balbo, Congress, Jackson, and Monroe. Seal off the bridges completely, and the demonstrators would be trapped inside the park. Allow the demonstrators to cross, and there would be a bloodbath.

His telephone was on the floor beside the threadbare sofa. He sat down and dialed his parents' home; his mother answered on the third ring.

"Hello?"

"Mom."

"Hardy! How are you?"

"Fine, Mom. I'm fine. You?"

"Just peachy, dear. You know, it's so sweet of you to call, but this isn't a very good time. It's Wednesday, honey--bridge night, remember?" She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, as though she was sharing sensitive state secrets. "I have a house full of very demanding guests."

"Actually Mom, I need to talk to Wilson. Is he home?"

"Wilson? No honey, I thought he was with you!"

"With me?"

"I know how you boys like to hang out, watch TV, talk about your girlfriends. . . . Oh! I see, you're calling because he hasn't gotten there yet. Don't worry honey, I'm sure he'll arrive soon. Everything is just mixed up and slowed down because of those awful hippies. Now you boys have a fine evening, and don't drink too much!"

Harding realized that she was about to hang up. "Mom, wait! This is important--do you know what he was wearing when he left?"

"Don't be silly, Hardy. You sound just like your father sometimes." Her voice took on its most patient, 'I'm-your-mother-and-I-know-what's-best' tone. "You are not taking a Missing Persons report, because Willie is not missing. Just be patient, and he'll be there before you know it."

"Mom, please! What color shirt?"

"I have to go, son. Mrs. Gilmore just bid three spades, and now she needs another martini. Be good! Love you! 'Bye!"

Click.

Harding slammed the telephone down savagely. Stupid kid! When was that little moron going to learn that if you're going to use somebody as an alibi, you have to make sure they know about it! He looked up at the television, where another Democrat was at the podium, extolling the virtues of Vice President Humphrey. With a snarl he turned off the television, and turned on his transistor radio instead.

". . . mood in Grant Park is a giddy mixture of joy, defiance, and fear. Just half an hour ago, someone in the crowd rushed up to the flagpole at the center of the park, and as the delirious and quite probably intoxicated mob chanted, 'Take it down! Take it down! Take it down!' lowered the Stars and Stripes, and raised in its place a red flag, possibly that of the Communist. . ."

Harding groaned and slammed his fist on the city map in frustration. How could Wilson get mixed up in such a stupid crowd? Their leaders were playing strained emotions of the city like an ill-tuned instrument, masterfully orchestrating chaos and discord. 

His attention was caught by a reflection of light off his badge, which was pinned properly on the left side of the shirt that hung over the back of the chair. He hesitated for several long seconds while he bitterly remembered the captain's cool disdain and the unquestioningly clear terms of his suspension, then plucked the shirt from the chair and began to get dressed.

". . .Viet Cong. Some witnesses say it was the flag of Red China, others insist it was only a red-colored t-shirt. I have spoken with several members of the Youth International Party, who tell me that the word is that they will march out of the park en masse . . . "

He grabbed his helmet and nightstick, and dashed out the door as the radio continued to describe the unfolding events. ". . . to Michigan Avenue. Apparently, whether the city will give them a parade permit or not, they are determined to bring their message personally to the Democratic National Convention at the Chicago Convention Center."

*******************

****

Chapter Four

Harding eyed the prisoners warily. There were thirteen of them, sitting sullenly on the metal benches that ran the length of the paddy wagon. Bedraggled, weary and beaten, they sat in silence and stared at him--some with fear, some with disgust. In one dim corner of the van a dreamy-eyed flower child sang "Blowin' in the Wind" but kept mixing up the words. "How many times can a man look up, and pretend that he just doesn't see?"

As Harding turned to leave, the prisoner who was seated closest to the door lurched to his feet. Harding sized him up; almost six-six but lanky, tie-dyed shirt and beaded suede vest hanging loosely on his frame. His long black hair was pulled back into a ponytail and his bushy beard was in need of some serious grooming. The prisoner stood there silently, his hands cuffed behind his back, his hazel eyes cold with anger. He opened his mouth as if to say something, then spat at Harding's face. He continued to glare, his jaw hanging slack as if he were considering further action, until Harding planted a beefy hand on his chest and shoved him back onto the bench. Taking one last look around, Harding climbed down to the street.

A rookie was waiting for him on the street. "You didn't find the guy you're looking for?" 

Harding pulled a plain white handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the spittle from his chin. "Nah."

The young officer swung the door shut, then slapped his hand roughly against the side of the truck as a signal to the driver. As the paddy wagon pulled away from the curb and sped away toward the Central District station, Harding looked up into the night sky and tried not to hear the sounds of battle on Michigan Avenue, where police had been clashing with protesters for the last two hours. 

When he first arrived on the scene, Harding had wasted almost forty minutes out there on the urban battleground, eyes streaming from the drifting clouds of tear gas, searching for Wilson among the milling mob. The Yippies' parade of triumph had degenerated into a cattle drive, as a thousand blue-helmeted cops used their nightsticks to herd them toward. . . toward where? 

God only knew what the police were trying to accomplish! They certainly couldn't arrest all ten thousand protesters, there weren't enough jail cells in Chicago to hold them that night. They weren't letting them back into the park (although Harding guessed that a majority of the protesters would happily return there if they could escape the police). Letting them proceed south toward the convention center was out of the question; borrowed troops from the Illinois National Guard stood as a second line of defense in that direction. 

If the overall police strategy was a mystery, the objective of individual police officers was quite plain. Again and again Harding watched as his fellow officers used their nightsticks to apply a primitive form of justice to protesters, bystanders, and journalists alike. 

Near the corner of Michigan and Balbo he had watched as three cops, anonymous in their identical helmets and uniforms stripped of identification, took turns using their nightsticks on a hippie who wouldn't (or couldn't) move quickly enough to satisfy them. The young man struggled to get to his feet, to run or at least to defend himself, but each time he regained his feet another cruel blow drove him back to the pavement. At that sight Harding had veered off onto Balbo Street where he quickly located a storm drain to vomit into. Then he willed his heart to stop racing, and his eyes to stop watering, as he decided to stop acting on his instincts and to start using his brain instead.

There was no way he could locate Wilson in these conditions. But right here on Balbo Street the cops had brought in a fleet of paddy wagons and other trucks for transporting prisoners to the Central District for processing. Harding calculated that the worst possible place for Wilson to end up tonight would be the holding cells at Central. So here he stayed, checking the occupants of each paddy wagon before it headed into town.

"Who are we looking for, again?" The rookie wanted to be helpful.

"Twenty-one year old white male, five-nine, one seventy-five, very short light-brown hair, blue eyes. . . ."

"Name?"

Harding gave him a hard look. "No name. Just let me know if you see somebody fitting the description, and I'll come eyeball him."

"Who is this lucky sonofabitch?"

"NOBODY!" Harding's mind raced. "He's nobody. His father's a close personal friend of my lieutenant, and that's all I'm gonna say."

The young officer nodded wisely. "Ahh. So that's what you're doing down here, so far from your district." He gave Harding a conspiratorial wink and headed over to start loading the next group of prisoners. Harding hung back, his attention caught by a small drama unfolding at the other end of the block.

A squad of National Guardsmen stood watch over the intersection of Balbo and Michigan, charged with the duty of steering the riot away from the paddy wagon operation. Harding watched as the young soldiers were being harassed by a short, dark-haired young woman in a bright yellow dress. She had her hands locked tight on one Guardsman's arm, and she was struggling to pull him away from the hastily-erected sawhorse barricade, out into the chaos on Michigan. He shook her off, and laughed as one of his fellows shoved her roughly toward the curb. She stumbled, recovered, then charged again. She could move fast, for such a little thing, and she grabbed another Guardsman by the hand and tried vainly to pull him toward the Avenue. The others stood back and watched with amusement while a burly Chicago police officer loomed up behind her. Harding's gut twisted in revulsion as he watched the man swing his nightstick sadistically across the woman's buttocks. She cried out in pain, and kicked savagely at her attacker, catching him just below the knee with her low heel, then doggedly renewed her efforts to pull the Guardsman away from the line.

Harding charged down the street as the officer braced to strike again, reaching him just in time to grab the business end of his nightstick on the upswing. He twisted it sharply, so the attacker would be forced to turn away from the woman. "For Christ's sake, stop it!" he yelled, as he came face to face with the enraged cop. Harding saw in the man's pale blue eyes a reflection of his own anger and fear, twisted around one another in an endless knot. 

"Harding!"

The face of his own father. 

"What the hell are you doing here?"

Something frightening passed between them at that moment, as if neither man had ever seen the other before. Art Welsh looked for a cowed, hesitant rookie, but saw instead a seasoned officer, strengthened by righteous anger and grim purpose. Harding looked for wisdom and reassurance, but saw instead his father's bloodshot eyes and dilated pupils, and smelled the liquor on his breath. That his father had a drinking problem was no surprise to Harding--that ugly fact had been a carefully unspoken secret in the family for as long as he could remember--but he had never, not ever imagined that his father would be soused on the job.

"I said, what the hell are you doing here!" Sgt. Welsh bellowed at his son.

"Protecting. Serving." Harding stared defiantly at his father. "I'm doing my job."

The older man grabbed his son by the elbow, and steered him a dozen yards up the street from the intersection--out of the way of the National Guardsmen who were still trying to pry the tiny woman away from their colleague. "Like hell you are. You're suspended!" He jabbed his nightstick into Harding's chest, stopping him in his tracks. "Or didn't you think I would hear about what you said to Ralph Molloy and the Captain this afternoon?" 

Harding said nothing.

"You think I'm gonna come right in and fix this for you? Is that what you think?" Beery fumes washed over Harding's face as his father raged. "You got another thing coming, Mister! They'll have your shield for this, and I'll stand right there and help because no son of mine--do you hear me?--NO son of mine would ever be involved in behavior so disrespectful, so shameful, so despicable. . . ."

"Hey, Sarge!" came a cry from an officer near the line of paddy wagons. 

"Not now!" shouted Sgt. Welsh over his shoulder.

"Sarge, Central says they can't take any more intakes right now! Whaddaya want us to do with these. . . ?"

The sergeant turned to his son and pointed a finger firmly at the ground at their feet. "Right here, do you understand me? You stay right here, and you wait for me. You don't move from this spot. Do you understand me?"

"Yes."

"I said, DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?"

"Yes, SIR!"

The sergeant grunted in disgust, then headed up the street to rejoin his men. Harding stood rooted to the spot, and wondered what he should do next. He was painfully aware of the hostile stares of the other cops on Balbo Street; they had seen him dare to challenge their Sarge, and their loyalty belonged to him. He felt a gentle tug on his sleeve, but his patience was gone. "Get lost!" he snapped, before he even turned to see who it was. "I said, get lo. . . ."

It was the little woman in the yellow dress. She was pulling steadily, insistently, babbling all the while in what sounded like Spanish. Unable to follow her words, he watched her body language instead--hands waving expressively, wisps of her long dark brown hair escaping from her braids and falling into her eyes. Figures, doesn't it? Of the two brothers, Wilson was the one who could speak Spanish; Harding had barely managed to squeeze a passing grade in the course in high school. The woman kept repeating the same phrase over and over, her voice rising higher and higher with desperation. To Harding it sounded like, "Me a-feel ya! Me a-feel ya!"

"What?"

"Me a-feel ya!"

He finally remembered one of his handful of Spanish phrases. _"Ingles, por favor!"_

She blinked, then abruptly switched to English. "My daughter!" She grabbed his arm and turned him bodily toward Michigan Avenue. "My daughter!"

"Your daughter is out there?" He tried to imagine a child out there alone in the middle of a riot. "How the hell did that happen?"

She realized that he finally understood what the problem was, and she gave a great wail of grief as she returned to pulling on his arm. If she could have propelled him physically down the street and into the fray, she would have. Harding grabbed her wrist with his free hand and pulled her off.

"How old is she?" No use, she was yammering in Spanish again. What was the damn word? _"Cuantos años. . . ?"_

_"Cosa hai detto?"_

Hell. Maybe it wasn't Spanish after all. He held his hand at waist level as if indicating the height of a child, then moved it up and down a few inches to indicate uncertainty, then repeated, loudly and slowly, "How--old--is--she?"

_"Quattro!"_ She held up four fingers for emphasis, then indicated a height just below her hip. 

Four years old. Jesus H. Christ, she was hardly more than a baby. "What's her name?" 

_"Per favore! Mia figlia, è là!"_

"Name! What's her. . . oh shit. _Como. . .como, como se. . .?"_

"Maria!"

"Good! Good, good." He summarized what he knew so far. "Maria. Four years old." He held up four fingers, then indicated the little girl's height. "This tall." He then brushed his hand across his chest, and asked, _Color?"_

_"Blu!"_

"Got it." He raised his voice, as if his speaking louder would make it easier for her to understand. "You--WAIT--here. HERE. Don't move. Stay HERE." He headed for Michigan, and the woman followed.

_"Mia figlia!"_

As if that was any help! "STAY HERE!" He pointed angrily at the ground at her feet. "Here, dammit!"

She nodded miserably. _"Sì."_

"Good. _Sì_ , good. You stay here, I'll find your little girl." He swallowed, found his courage, and headed back out into the battle on Michigan Avenue. 

*******************

****

Chapter Five

The first thing Harding noticed was the light. Between the floodlights erected by the police and those in use by the dozen or so television crews, Michigan Avenue was almost as bright as Comiskey Park on game night. The intersection of Michigan and Balbo had been swept relatively clear of protesters, although a straggler or two dashed across every minute or so, often only a step or two ahead of retribution. In the blocks to the north and south the battle raged on, here there was an eerie calm.

He grabbed an officer who was in half-hearted pursuit of a bedraggled hippie. "Hey! I'm looking for a kid!"

"Yeah, right!"

"A little kid! Four years old, wearing blue. She's got separated from her mama, somewhere near here."

The officer shook his head. "Whaddaya think this is, "Romper Room"? We ain't got no little kids out here!"

The next five men he asked gave him the same answer. Nobody had seen a four-year-old girl on Michigan Avenue in the middle of the riot. The sixth, however, was helpful. No, he hadn't seen a little girl, but he had heard one, wailing away among the spectators who lined the sidewalk outside the Conrad Hilton. He pointed out the southwest corner of the intersection with his nightstick, then dashed off in pursuit of another straggler.

Harding caught a whiff of tear gas. The wind was shifting again.

The Conrad Hilton was one of Chicago's finest hotels. It occupied the entire block between Michigan and Wabash, from Balbo south to--Harding tried to remember his map of downtown Chicago--down to whatever was the next street after Balbo. After the convention center itself, the Conrad Hilton had to have been the Yippies' favorite target, as it was home to the man who, despite all their efforts and wishes to the contrary, was at this very moment being nominated to carry the Democratic standard in 1968. 

So here was a detachment of at least a hundred cops, augmented by another fifty National Guardsmen, protecting a cushion of safe space around the hotel's mid-block main entrance with a barricade of sawhorses. Between the barricade and the corner of Balbo a crowd of civilians was watching the riot from the sidewalk outside the famous Haymarket Lounge. Inside the Haymarket the Hilton's guests were dining on steak and lobster while gawking through the huge plate-glass picture window at the chaos beyond. 

The crowd on the sidewalk was growing rapidly, as the protesters who were fleeing from the cops found refuge among the spectators. At its widest, near the corner of Balbo, the crowd was packed in almost twenty deep from the building out into the street. As Harding watched, a blue-helmeted officer pursued a particular miscreant into that crowd, shoving bystanders out of the way in order to make an arrest. At the moment the cop grabbed the protester's collar, several dozen of the civilians nearby were toppled over in the melee, and Harding heard a piercingly high scream.

He reversed his nightstick, laying most of its length along his forearm with only a few inches of handle extending beyond his fingers. He charged into the crowd, following the sound of the child's cries, using his own formidable bulk to plow a path; he prodded the handle of the nightstick into the ribs of unyielding individuals to help move them out of his way. As his fellow officer dragged the protester away, the crowd was able to shift into the space thus opened, and Harding worked his way to the brick wall of the Haymarket Lounge in short order. 

She was huddled on the sidewalk at the foot of the wall, a tiny blue bundle with her head between her knees and her hands clasped together over her head. Harding wondered at the marvel; nothing but raw animal instinct could have told her to protect her head, face and belly that way. Her baby-blue dress and tights were torn and dirty from her ordeal. He crouched down beside her, forming a protective barrier between her and the crushing crowd, then brushed his hand across her brown curls. "Maria?"

At the sound of her name, she opened up with an even louder wailing cry. Harding took that as confirmation, and plucked her up off the sidewalk and stood up with her in his arms. He cradled her head against his broad shoulder, and crooned in her ear, "Sshhhh. Maria, Maria, you're going to be fine, just fine. Your Mama asked me to find you. She loves you and she's waiting for you. Okay?"

She continued to sob for a while, but her energy was no longer in it. Dirty tears still rolled across her cheeks, perhaps as much from the lingering effects of the tear gas as from fear; her panicked hyperventilation slowed into dainty hiccups. Not sure what else to say to such a young child, Harding gave what he hoped was a reassuring smile. 

She reached tentatively and touched one finger to his star, counting the points as though she were reciting a lesson, "One (hic!), two, three, four (hic!), five." Perhaps her mother had been wise enough to teach her what the symbol meant--that the star-shaped badge would be worn by a grownup she should trust--or maybe her attention was simply captured by the simple shape and shiny surface. In any case, Harding was relieved that he would not need to deal with the childish screams in his ear as he carried her to safety.

He turned away from the building and managed to force his way a few yards from the building, each step forward more difficult than the last; he realized with dread that the apparent size of the crowd had almost doubled since he first pushed his way in. A quick glance to the north told him why--the National Guardsmen at the foot of Balbo Street were now using their sawhorses to push the northern edge of the crowd southward, in a strange mirror image of the barricade at the hotel entrance that was pushing the southern edge of the crowd northward. Pressed from both sides, the people on the edge of the throng were being squeezed outward onto Michigan Avenue, where dozens of enraged cops were using their nightsticks to drive them back toward the sidewalk. Harding watched incredulously as one of those officers calmly pulled out his canister of Mace and squirted a stream of the caustic liquid into the crowd as he walked along the perimeter. 

"I gotta get this little girl out to her mother!" he shouted, to no avail. The people around him glanced at him with looks of sympathy, of embarrassment, of discomfort. They were all being held immobile by the crush of bodies, and Harding and his precious burden were trapped with them. 

"Officer!"

He scanned the faces in the crowd. "Who said that?"

"Officer! Over here!" A hand had emerged from the sea of faces, just a yard or so away to his left. It belonged to a young man who, like Harding, was tall enough to see over the heads of most of the people around him. 

"Whaddaya want?"

"Where's the girl's mother?"

"What?"

"Where is she? The girl's mother!" 

Harding realized with a start what the young man was thinking. He was only a yard away, but it was a yard closer to the edge of the crowd, a yard closer to the frantic woman in the yellow dress on Balbo Street. "The mother's on Balbo! Can you get out?"

The young man shook his head. "No, I don't think so. But my friend's a yard or so away, in the right direction." He twisted around and called over his shoulder, "Mike? Can you move at all?"

Harding could just make out Mike's response. "Not very much, Dan."

"But you can move?"

"Yeah, a little." 

The young man--Dan, apparently--turned back to Harding. "We can do this, Officer. She's so little--I think we can get her out of here."

Harding listened to this exchange with half his attention; the other half of his mind was gravely considering the possibility of handing Maria over to this stranger. He wondered what Dan was doing on Michigan Avenue tonight, whether he was a curious onlooker or whether he was one of the Yippie protesters driven into the crowd by the police. Dan seemed respectable enough, clean-shaven with blond hair just long enough in back to brush the collar of his green t-shirt. He looked down at the little girl in his arms; she gazed up at him in wordless trust, and hiccuped.

A wave of pressure swept through the crowd from the south. Several of the people to Harding's right were toppled by the motion, and even more would have fallen had they not been stuck like corks. Harding dropped to one knee and held Maria tightly to his chest. When the crowd motion stabilized around him, he fought his way to his feet again--no easy task, the bodies were packed in even tighter now--and relocated Dan.

"Hey, Dan!"

"Yes, Officer?"

"Ask your friend if he can see the mother."

"What's she look like?"

Harding paused and realized with puzzlement that he had already made his decision. "She's about five two, a hundred, maybe a hundred ten pounds, long brown hair in two braids. She's wearing a yellow sundress." He listened as Dan repeated the description over his shoulder, then relaxed in triumphant hope when he heard Mike's reply.

"I see her!"

"What's her name?" asked Dan.

"The little girl's name is Maria. The mother's name--I don't know."

That didn't stop Mike. He was already yelling as loud as he could manage, "Hey! Mama! MARIA'S MAMA!"

Harding shifted Maria's weight to his left arm, and handed her his nightstick. "Hold this for a minute, okay?" She nodded solemnly, and took the stick in her chubby hands. Harding unsnapped the chin strap of his blue helmet and pulled it off with his free hand; his hair was soaking wet and plastered to his scalp. He put the helmet on Maria's head and shortened the strap as far as it would go--which was not far enough, of course. The sight of the huge helmet on her tiny head was comical, but the purpose was deadly serious. He took the nightstick back from her, and shifted his hold to her waist. "Can you hold on to that silly hat for me, Maria?"

She laughed. "It's too big."

"Yeah, well I have a big head. But I want you to wear it, because it's blue like your dress, and 'cause it'll bring you good luck. Okay?"

"Okay."

"You'll hold on tight?"

She reached up and grabbed on tight to the helmet. "I'll hold on tight."

"That's a good girl." He lifted her up. "Dan?"

Dan reached out, and Harding tried to pass her to his outstretched hands. He couldn't quite make it, no matter how much they both strained, and as he struggled to reach just a few inches more he felt his grip on the little girl's waist start to slip. For a sickening moment he thought that she was headed for the pavement, but in that instant three more pairs of hands appeared, bearing Maria up and carrying her effortlessly across to Dan's arms. 

"Got her!" Dan cried.

"Amen!" rang out a woman's voice from Harding's left. He looked down at her, and shared in her smile of triumph, her hands still held high over her head in victory. He then looked up to see Dan passing Maria into the crowd, a forest of upraised hands floating her away from danger. Then he lost sight of her as he was swept backwards two steps by another shift in the press of bodies.

When he recovered his stance he looked around and re-evaluated the situation. The police were continuing to attack the people on the edges of the crowd, on both Michigan and Balbo, herding them closer and closer to one another and to the unyielding wall and plate-glass window of the Haymarket Lounge. There was no sign of the little Maria in her blue dress and matching helmet; he prayed that she had found her way safely back to her mother on Balbo Street. 

Another shove in the hip, another elbow in the kidney, and Harding took another involuntary step toward the Haymarket. This time it took several moments off-balance with his left hand on a total stranger's shoulder before he realized that he simply couldn't move his other foot well enough to completely recover his balance. He stood there on one foot, helpless, held upright by the press of the bodies around him. 

Through the Haymarket's plate-glass picture window he could see startled customers staring out with morbid curiosity at the press of bodies growing tighter and tighter. The glass seemed to quiver, distorting the images beyond, and the well-dressed diners began to abandon their meals and retreat as the huge window bowed and flexed under the strain.

The moment when window shattered seemed to stretch into several minutes. The glass first frosted over with a crazy-pattern of cracks, then seemed to hang in place in defiance of gravity as the first row of people toppled through into the restaurant. Then the broken pieces slid earthward still in their vertical plane, slicing and splintering as they cascaded over the people in the way. Harding watched, transfixed, as the crowd realized that the restaurant had just become an escape-route. The people who had been crushed against the building now rushed into the Haymarket by the dozens, knocking over tables and patrons as they were swept along by the stampede of bodies behind them. 

For several long seconds he waited for the pressure-release to move through the crowd outward from the building, but when it reached him he was thrown forward onto his hands and knees before he could regain his balance. Pain flashed through his palms when they struck the pavement; he lost hold of his nightstick and it rolled a few feet down the sidewalk, just out of reach. He scrambled forward among the pandemonium of running feet, reaching forward with his numb fingers to regain it, when a sturdy work boot came down with bone-crushing force on the back of his right hand as its owner rushed by.

Harding gasped in pain and toppled helplessly onto his side, cradling the injured hand against his chest, tears in his eyes. "Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck. . . . " He bit his lower lip until it bled, and forced himself to climb slowly back onto his knees, using only his left hand for support. The one time that he allowed the fingertips of his right hand to brush the ground, fiery pain shot up the length of his arm and he swayed with dizziness. His first priority was to recover his dropped nightstick, but as he groped around on the ground among the flash of running feet, he could not find it.

CRACK! Pain exploded across the back of his head. He crashed face-first to the concrete, his vision plunged into darkness punctuated by a million sparks of light. As consciousness faded, he noticed for the first time the angry chant of the defiant crowd.

"The whole world is watching! The whole world is watching! The whole world is watching!"

*******************

CRACK! 

The sound of the first volley awoke Harding with a start. Even though he had known that it was coming, the noise and the shock wave had caught him unprepared. A few yards away the seven Army riflemen raised their weapons to the sky and fired the second volley. 

CRACK! 

A chill wind whipped across the riverside plain at Arlington National Cemetery on this Friday afternoon, late November 1999. The small group of mourners stood in a tight knot beside the flag-draped casket, as if huddled together for warmth. At the center of the group, seated on two chairs, were the grieving sons, Harding and Wilson. Harding and several of the other mourners were wearing the black dress uniform and distinctive checkerboard-banded cap of the Chicago Police Department; Wilson wore his tan-colored uniform, brown jacket and Stetson as Sheriff of Willison.

A simple white marker was already in place at the head of the open grave; on the back of it was the name of the dead man's wife, who had been interred there many years earlier: 

Leonora J. Welsh   
wife of Sgt. A. C. Welsh  
May 17, 1915  
October 14, 1979

CRACK!

With the last seven of the twenty-one shots echoing from the hills of Arlington, the honor guard stepped forward to remove and fold the flag while a bugler played "Taps." The slow, melancholy notes of the song allowed Harding a measure of peace, and a chance to isolate his thoughts away from his father's funeral.

*******************

****

Chapter Six

"You defied the suspension because you thought I might need to be rescued?" Wilson shook his head with disbelief. 

Harding grunted and slowly tried to shift his weight in the hospital bed. He was exhausting himself with the effort, in part because he could barely wiggle the fingers of his right hand within the plaster cast, much less bear any weight on it. He had been trying for hours to find a comfortable position on the pillow, but that was a hopeless quest; the pain he was trying to ease came from within, not from without. 

"You want some more medicine?"

"No." Harding gritted his teeth and tried to ignore the ache that spread across the back of his head from his ears down to his shoulders, and the pulse that pounded unrelenting pain from his right elbow down to his fingertips with each heartbeat. 

"Yes, you do. The nurse said you could have another dose if you wanted it, and you need it."

"I do. . . NOT. . . need any more drugs." He braced his left hand against the bars of his raised bed side and tried to push himself up higher on the pillow. Wilson saw what he was trying to do and grasped his right shoulder and arm to assist. Harding tried to shake him off, but only managed to jar his tender hand against the thin white blanket in the process. "AAHHH!" he gasped, then hissed through clenched teeth, "Let go of me!"

"I was just trying to help."

"I didn't ask for your help!"

Wilson flushed and sat back down in the visitor's chair. "No. I guess you didn't."

Harding braced himself again, dug his heels into the mattress, and managed to shift himself up about two inches. The move left him exhausted and dizzy. He lay still in his new position, waiting for the bed to stop spinning, and realized with regret that all he had managed to do was bunch up his pillow under his neck and make the bedclothes lumpy under his shoulders. 

A day and a half had passed since Harding had been left sprawled on the sidewalk outside the Haymarket Lounge. He'd been in surgery for most of Wednesday night, both for the depressed skull fracture just behind his right ear, and for the half-dozen broken bones in his hand, and he hadn't been moved from the recovery room into this private room until almost noon on Thursday. During those long hours Wilson had kept vigil with his mother, but by mid-afternoon Thursday she went home to cook for her husband. 

Sgt. Welsh did not come to the hospital at all.

While Harding slept through most of Thursday, Wilson passed the time reading the accounts of the riots in the newspapers and listening to Hubert Humphrey's acceptance speech and the close of the convention on a transistor radio. From time to time he would grow too restless to sit quietly, and he would jog up and down the hospital stairs for a quarter hour, or give a hundred pushups on the floor beside his brother's bed. Nurse Arndt, the iron-willed nurse supervisor, had made every effort to evict him when visiting hours ended; she relented only when he solemnly promised to do nothing to disturb Harding's rest. The other nurses had grown fond of the handsome young man in the Chicago P.D. Academy t-shirt, and one of them snuck him a pillow and blanket to use when he napped in his chair during the long hours of Thursday night.

Friday morning had dawned with an abrupt change in the weather; cooler and drier, a teasing taste of the autumn weather to come. Harding awoke confused and cranky, and all the painkillers in the world wouldn't improve his mood. Wilson filled him in on the aftermath of the riot, and with genuine curiosity he probed his brother's memory of the events of Wednesday night.

"So you were out there looking for me?"

"Shoulda known better." Harding lifted his uninjured left hand and picked at the bandages that swathed his head. Every touch, every feather-light pressure on his forehead sent lances of pain through his head, plain proof that the memories of Michigan Avenue were real. "Shoulda known you'd come out of this smelling like a rose--not arrested, not beaten, not a mark on you."

"Harding. . . I. . . ."

"Where were you, anyway?"

"Where was I?"

"Yeah."

"I. . . uh. . . I wasn't there."

"Whaddaya mean, you weren't there?"

"Hardy, Mom told you when you called. I was on my way to your place."

"You were. . . ?" He couldn't finish the thought. He let his hand fall back down to the bed, as he tried to remember his conversation on the phone with his mother. 

"Mom had her Bridge Club over for the evening. I couldn't stand watching the convention with a room full of middle-aged Humphrey supporters, so. . . "

"So. . . ?"

"So, I figured you were at work, you wouldn't mind if I watched the TV at your place."

"Watched the. . . ." Harding couldn't believe it. "What happened to standing up for what you believe in? What happened to exercising your Constitutional right to petition the government for the. . . for the. . ."

". . . redress of grievances."

"Yeah, yeah. What the hell happened to that?"

Wilson exploded from the chair in frustration. "You told me not to go! You told me to stay away! You ordered. . . hell, you threatened me. . . "

Harding grimaced. "You listened to me? Unbelievable."

"I always listen to you, Harding."

"I'm out there getting my head bashed in, and you're sitting there in my apartment, eatin' and drinkin' and watchin' the whole thing like it was a fucking TV show."

A commotion in the hallway burst suddenly into Harding's room. Wilson didn't recognize the tall man with the shock of white hair, but the gold braid on the uniform cap told him to stand up straight and to keep his mouth shut. Capt. Harrison swept into the room regally, taking it for granted that he would be welcome and honored, and challenging anyone to say otherwise. Harding groaned quietly and closed his eyes. Close behind the captain came several rumpled men carrying cameras, and others with notebooks and tape-recorders. At the rear of the train were two men hauling a television camera and sound equipment, followed by Lt. Molloy, Sgt. Welsh, and a young nurse in full battle cry.

"I don't care if you're the King of Siam, sir. . . . Sir! You simply cannot barge into a patient's room with all these people! This is a direct violation of hospital policy, and I insist that you leave this instant!"

Molloy turned on her. "That's great, honey. You go get the hospital administrator, and tell him how you got in the way of a police Captain on official business. By the time you get back here, we'll be finished, and you'll look mighty foolish, won't you?"

"I'll call Security."

Molloy barked, a crude laugh. "You do that, sweetheart."

Capt. Harrison elbowed Wilson away from the bedside, then peered down at his injured officer with cold curiosity. Without thinking, he reached out awkwardly to pat Harding's hand in sympathy, provoking a gasp of pain. Wilson sized up the situation and went in search of Nurse Arndt, to let her know that Harding would be needing that pain medicine, after all.

Harrison glanced across the room to the television crew, to make sure that they had their equipment set up. The reporters got their tape recorders ready, the photographers checked their cameras, and Harrison poured himself a cup of water from the pitcher on the table beside the bed. The young reporter from the Sun-Times peered across the room and blanched at the sight of the black bruises and rough red abrasions that marred Harding's face.

Sgt. Welsh crouched down beside the bed on the opposite side from the captain, and spoke quietly in his son's ear. "They're going to give you a medal, son. The department needs some heroes right now, and you, son, have the kind of injuries that show up real good in a photograph--which is why your mug is going to be on every front page in the city tomorrow, and the good people of Chicago are going to get you with their cornflakes."

Harding gritted his teeth against the pain and turned his head to look into his father's face. The sergeant's blue eyes were cold with contempt, his lips pressed together in a tight line. Harding listened and said nothing. 

"But I know the truth. Malloy and Harrison know the truth. Every cop in this city knows the truth. That tin-pot medal does not make you a hero, and it doesn't change the fact that you are guilty of insubordination, and that you are about six miles up shit's creek without a paddle."

Capt. Harrison cleared his throat. "Gentlemen, are you ready?" The journalists grunted their answer, and Sgt. Welsh stood and moved out of camera range. The captain smoothed his hair, straightened his tie, and smiled broadly. "Then let's begin."

Roll tape.

"For the last four days the national media has made much of the tragic violence that has disrupted some of our streets during the National Democratic Convention. Much attention has been paid to incidents in which officers of the Chicago Police Department and the Illinois National Guard have found it necessary to use measured force, in order to prevent a violent disruption of the convention and to spare the rest of our great city from lawlessness and anarchy. 

"However, the American people have not been told of the extreme provocation our officers have been subjected to, nor have they been made aware of the violence tactics and homemade weapons used by the agitators who call themselves 'Yippies'. We are here today to acknowledge and honor the service of a brave officer, who was gravely wounded two days ago by violent protesters on Michigan Avenue."

Three flashbulbs popped in rapid succession, and Harding was briefly blinded by the burst of blue-hot lights. He closed his eyes while the photographers took several more shots, and prayed that the speech would be short. The captain's voice droned on, every word the honest-to-God truth, the ceremony itself a bald-faced lie. 

". . . skull fracture was caused by a long, cylindrical weapon, possibly a baseball bat or a lead pipe. He was wounded a second time after he fell to the ground, when somebody stomped on his right hand, crushing seven bones. This second injury. . . ."

Lt. Molloy interrupted. "Third injury."

"Third?" asked the captain, staring at Molloy with irritation and impatience.

"Yeah." Molloy suddenly remembered the reporters, and continued self-consciously. "Tuesday night, right? He got knocked over and bit by the stupid pig."

A reporter from the _Tribune_ spoke up, unable to conceal his amusement. "You're telling me that this officer was attacked by Pigasus?" Several of the other journalists joined in the laughter.

"It's not funny!" Molloy silenced them, his face beet-red with rage. "You think this is some kind of joke? Harding--show 'em your belly where the pig bit you." He grabbed one corner of Harding's blanket and yanked it down and out of the way, revealing Harding's pale blue, tissue-thin hospital gown.

Harding grabbed the blanket with his left hand, suddenly envisioning a full-color photograph of his bruised stomach with pig-bite marks on the front page of every newspaper in the city. He carefully held his throbbing right hand out of the way while he and his lieutenant played an improbable game of tug-of-war, the television camera recording every stupid move. 

Their dignity was spared as Wilson returned with Nurse Arndt. She tapped one of the photographers sharply on the shoulder and said, "Excuse me!" He lowered his camera and shifted to his left, and she shoved past him to reach her patient. 

Molloy blocked her way, and gestured to the television crew, indicating that they should stop recording. "Look lady, can't this wait until we're finished?"

She glared up at him, and waved a hand at the assembled reporters. "Do you want to explain to these people why you're stopping me from providing medical care to this man?"

Harrison quickly replied, "Of course, we wouldn't dream of preventing you from providing our fellow officer with the very best of care, Miss. . . ?"

She took great pleasure in ignoring him. She leaned over the bed and addressed her patient, "Officer Welsh? Your brother told me that you wanted another dose of pain medicine. Is that what you want?"

"Yeah," he breathed.

"Very well," she answered with a iron smile, then turned around to face the media circus that surrounded the bed. "Out. Now."

"We're not quite finished, yet." Capt. Harrison couldn't quite fathom how to deal with this formidable woman.

"I'm going to give Officer Welsh something for the considerable pain he has been enduring while you produced your little show. In a minute or two he'll probably fall asleep, which is the very best thing for his health right now."

"Perhaps we could. . . ."

"Stay? Watch?" She marched over to confront the Captain, glaring at him over the steel rims of her spectacles. The stood toe to toe, just inches from the television camera. "This is what's going to happen. I'm going to help Officer Welsh roll over onto his side, so I can inject the medicine into his gluteus maximus. Do you know what that is?"

"A gluteum. . . saxis?'

"Gluteus maximus. His posterior. I need to inject the medication into his posterior." One of the reporters sniggered, and she laid a withering glance at him before returning her attention to the Captain. "Do you really need to get all of that on film?"

Capt. Harrison returned her stare, and they held each other's gaze for several long seconds in a test of will. He then surrendered with a gracious nod, smiled, and dismissed the journalists. As they gathered up their equipment and headed out, Harrison turned to Molloy and quietly inquired about the young man in the Academy t-shirt. 

"That's Wilson--he's Art's youngest." Molloy looked back and gestured for Wilson to follow them out into the hallway. "He's a fine young man, doing very well at the Academy."

The captain clapped Wilson on the shoulder. "Proud to be the--what, eighth?--no, ninth member of the Welsh family to be counted among Chicago's finest. . . . " The three of them disappeared into the hallway, their voices fading.

Nurse Arndt held Harding's right arm steady and out of harm's way while he slowly, carefully rolled over onto his left side. She quickly injected 10mg of Morphine into the muscle, then quickly smoothed out the sheets and pillows before helping him roll back down and get settled. Once she had him properly tucked in, she breezed from the room, pausing only momentarily to eye the tall, powerfully-built man in the sergeant's uniform who emerged silently from the corner of the room. 

"Nineteen forty-four." Sgt. Welsh loomed like a spectre over his son's bed, and tossed a slender, black leather-covered box onto his chest. "June 6."

"Yeah Pop. I remember." Harding shifted his weight and gingerly reached with his uninjured hand to touch the familiar box. He had grown up treasuring the medal inside, his father's precious Purple Heart. Now he closed his eyes and prayed that sleep would come quickly enough to spare him from this confrontation.

"No, you do not remember. You think you know, but you don't remember. You think you know because I told you about it. You think you know because you are damned lucky enough to grow up in a free country because I was on the beach in Normandy on D-Day. I took a bullet in the shoulder and another in the leg, and I was one of the lucky ones 'cause some of the finest men I ever knew were mowed down like dogs on that beach.

"Now you lie there in that bed feeling sorry for yourself because somebody whacked you over the back of the head, and somebody stepped on your hand, and the brass gave you a fancy medal for it 'cause they need a hero to distract the press and to make the mayor happy. Well I'm telling you, mister, you only think you know what war is, and that hunk of tin doesn't make you a hero!" 

Through the haze of medication, Harding struggled to compose a response. Was he pretending to be a hero? Did he want to be? He tried to remember a single moment from that waking nightmare that would be worth remembering, worth passing down to his own sons someday. The only memory that sprang to mind was the weight of little Maria in his arms, her tiny, trusting fingers counting the points of his star. 

His father continued. "In two separate incidents you defied a direct order from a superior officer. You should be thrown off the force for what you did. As far as I'm concerned, you don't deserve to wear the star."

The Morphine was taking hold and Harding heard his father's words through a thick fog. Maria was in his arms again. "One, two, three, four, five." A concerned voice in the crowd. . . outstretched arms. . .a host of upraised hands. 

Art Welsh snatched up the box containing his Purple Heart and left.

The whole world is watching. . . . The whole world. . . watching. . . . The . . . world. . . .

*******************

****

Chapter Seven

"On behalf of a grateful nation, I present this flag in appreciation for the honorable and faithful service rendered by your loved one."

The middle-aged Army chaplain who had conducted the graveside service was on one knee in front of Harding, presenting the American flag that had draped his father's casket to him as next-of-kin. Harding fought to focus his attention on the flag, precisely folded into a neat triangle, so tightly that not a thread of red was visible. There was only the blue and white, a night sky full of stars. 

How many times had he seen this done? How many times had he watched the young wives of slain cops, mothers, daughters and sons, crushed in their grief as they accepted the condolences of the city? And here he sat, stone-faced and empty-hearted while the chaplain knelt and waited.

This wasn't his place. The flag was for the eldest son. . . . 

He shook his head with confusion. Where had that thought come from? He was the eldest son, he had been for years. Decades. 

When had he last seen his father? For six, seven years after his mother's death he had dutifully visited his father at least three times each year: on his birthday, Christmas, and Father's Day. Gradually the visits became phone calls, then the phone calls became greeting cards. For the last few years he had often forgotten to even send a card. 

The chaplain continued to wait patiently for Harding to work through his grief. Some of the other guests shifted their weight from foot to foot as they wondered how long this part of the ceremony could last. Still Harding sat, motionless as a stone, eyes fixed on this token of thanks that he could not bring himself to accept.

Wilson coughed gently and leaned forward slightly in his chair. The chaplain understood the signal, and turned his body a few degrees so he could offer the flag to the son who actually showed some interest in accepting it. Wilson cradled the flag in his arms, and murmured, "Thank you."

The service was over. Harding stood when Wilson did, and together they turned to greet the small group of people, several of them retired Chicago cops, who had come to mourn for Art Welsh. Among them, the slight blonde woman in the Commander's uniform stood out as being by far the youngest person at the graveside. 

"Harding. Are you all right?"

"I'm fine, Commander. I'll be back to work on Monday."

"He was your father, Harding. Take your time, the 27th isn't going anywhere."

Wilson said his good-byes to Ralph Molloy, then joined Harding and the Commander. He held out his hand to her, and she shook it warmly. 

"Commander, this is my brother, Wilson. Uh, this is Commander Sherry O'Neill, my. . . uh. . . . . "

"You're his boss."

"I try to remind him of that at least three times a week." She smiled, and looked pointedly at Wilson's brown uniform. "Is it--Sheriff Welsh?"

Wilson ducked his head modestly, tugged at the brim of his hat, and gave that countrified cornpone look that made him such a heartbreaker down on the farm. "Yes, ma'am. I'm the Sheriff of Willison." 

"Willison?"

"In Wisconsin."

"Sheriff Wilson Welsh of Willison, Wisconsin?" She couldn't help but chuckle. 

*******************

"It's a couple hours northwest of here. Population six thousand. Get this, Harding--they got more cows in Willison than people!" 

Harding pushed his empty glass across the bar and the bartender replaced it with a fresh beer. "So what counts as a crime wave out there? Couple kids out tipping cows on a Friday night?"

"Go ahead, laugh. The next time some junkie vomits on your shoes, you'll wish you were in Willison," laughed Wilson as he popped a peanut into his mouth. 

They had met at shift's end, as they often did, for a couple of beers at McGinty's--a tradition that would come to an end that summer of '71. Wilson was almost incoherent with joy about his new job, and had babbled on for the last twenty minutes about nothing else. Harding listened stoically to the news, concentrating hard on the level of beer in his glass.

"Well?" Wilson asked.

"Well, what?"

"Aren't you happy for me?"

"What, that you're going to move to Mayberry and change your name to Barney Fife?"

"Well, thank you very much," Wilson said, in a voice that meant no such thing.

"What do you want me to say?" Harding slammed his beer down on the bar. "How exciting for you? What a great career move?"

"Yes!"

"That's a load of crap!"

"You don't understand, Harding. This is exciting for me. The Willison Sheriff's office has only four deputies. Four! Sheriff Hayden is a great guy, and he'd be my only boss. Think of that, Harding--no departmental politics, no long chain of command, no shit rolling downhill--just the Sheriff and his deputies." He gripped his brother's arm. "In ten or fifteen years, if I play my cards right, I could be Sheriff myself. The boss of my own department! You think I could ever have that here?"

"Sure you could. You're a Welsh! There are two Lieutenants and a Captain in your family tree. Somebody has to uphold the family traditions in this generation."

"Why not you?"

Harding dismissed the idea with a snort, "With my record? Yeah, right."

Wilson shook his head sadly, his point made. "You're right--not in this department. I'm not a fool, Harding--I can see what the score is. I don't know what 's keeping you here, but I can't wait to get out of this stinkin' force. We got a leadership of bootlickers and thugs, and I don't want any part of it."

"Don't you think you owe this city something?"

"For what?"

"For training you! For making a cop outta you!"

Wilson took a sip of beer and spoke quietly. "I signed a contract, Hardy. I signed the same contract you did. It says that the price for an Academy education is one year." He held up a finger for emphasis. "One year's service on the force, and then I'm free to go work wherever the hell I want to."

"Damn you. Leave me alone here. . . ."

"Then quit! What's keeping you here?"

"Loyalty!" Harding raged. 

"Loyalty? To what?"

"To this city."

"Oh, please! Harding, if there is one thing I've learned in the last two years, it's that there is a hell of a lot more to the world than just Chicago, Illinois. There are all kinds of interesting places to live and work, and yes--people do sometimes change jobs and move to new cities. Just because you work for the Chicago P.D., and Pop works for the Chicago P.D. and every other man in the family worked for the Chicago P.D. doesn't mean that I have to work for the Chicago goddamn P.D!" 

"Wilson. . . ."

"Look around you. Look at this city. Look at what this city has done to Pop. Ten years to retirement--do you think he can make it? Ten more years on the force, serving the people of Chicago from the inside of a bottle of gin? This city did that to him."

"He did that to himself."  


"This city is dying. It has decay in its heart and corruption in its soul."

"This city is my home."

"It doesn't own you. Lincoln freed the slaves, Harding; you can work anywhere you want to. More to the point, you don't owe this city anything more than you've already given--hell, you've already given it far more than it deserves. Look at you! You're holding your beer left-handed. Your hand's giving you trouble today, isn't it?"

Harding lifted his aching right hand onto the bar, and flexed his fingers slowly. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"That's what this city has done to you. What more do you owe?"

"Oh Jesus Christ, Wilson! That was three years ago--and it wasn't the city's fault."

Wilson recited, "The skull fracture was caused by a long, cylindrical weapon."

". . . possibly a baseball bat or a lead pipe," Harding retorted.

". . . possibly a police officer's nightstick." 

It was not the first time that Wilson had said it, nor the first time the Harding had considered it. Harding shook his head, he knew the next part too well. "Possibly my own nightstick, which I had dropped and which was never recovered."

"Which wouldn't have happened if the cops weren't stampeding a terrified mob through the broken window of the Haymarket Lounge. From where I was standing, it sure as hell looked like the city's fault."

"As I recall," Harding said bitterly, "where you were standing was in my apartment."

"Oh God! This again?" Wilson slapped his hand on the bar in frustration, drawing the attention of most of McGinty's early-afternoon patrons. Even the ragged drunk who had been sleeping at the end of the bar pulled his head up from his beer to listen. "How many times do I have to say it before the debt is paid? How many times?"

"Wilson. . . ."

The young man jumped down from his barstool and raised his voice dramatically, loud enough to be heard by everyone in the room. "Thank you! Thank you for the warning. Thank you for the advice. Thank you for worrying about me, thank you for looking for me, thank you for trying to protect me. And God--don't let me ever forget, thank you for defying your orders, violating your suspension, and fucking up your precious record on behalf of my sorry ass!"

************************

****

Chapter Eight

"Harding."

They were sitting together in the back seat of the funeral home's limousine, headed back to their hotel in Washington. Harding was lost in his thoughts, his eyes staring unseeing at the monuments to military heroes that graced the length of Memorial Drive.

"Hardy?" Wilson touched his brother's arm.

"Mmmmph."

"Before he died, Pop asked me to take care of something for him here in Washington. And. . . and he wanted us do it together."

Harding continued to stare out the window.

"Harding?"

"Yeah."

Wilson wondered for a moment whether that answer actually constituted consent. As the limo exited the traffic circle and headed out onto Memorial Bridge, Wilson leaned forward and spoke to the driver. "Could you drop us off at the other end of the bridge?"

"Not right at the end of the bridge. Farther along--near the Lincoln Memorial?"

"Yeah. That would be good."

"How will you get back to your hotel? I can't wait there for you. . . ."

"That's okay. We'll find our own way back--catch a cab, or walk."

"Okay, you're the boss."

"Thank you." Wilson sat back in the seat and watched out the window. 

The limo passed between the two massive golden statues ("Valor" and "Sacrifice") that guarded the end of the bridge and welcomed them to Washington, DC. The driver turned to the left and circled around the gleaming white marble Greek temple that housed the Daniel Chester French statue of a brooding Abraham Lincoln. He pulled over to the curb on 23rd Street, and stopped the limo under the spreading branches of a towering oak tree. "This is the closest I can get you to the Lincoln."

Wilson opened his door, and nudged Harding to get his attention. Harding obediently followed Wilson out of the car, stood and glanced around, trying to get his bearings in the unfamiliar city. 

"Come on." Wilson tapped him on the shoulder and led the way along an asphalt path. The wide marble steps leading up to the Lincoln Memorial were across the drive to their right--they were going to a different place. They had to weave and maneuver through the crowds of tourists who were taking in the sights, even on a chilly November afternoon. The path curved around a small visitors' center, and a bronze statue came into view.

Three young soldiers in worn jungle fatigues stood frozen in time as they seemed to emerge from a cluster of bare trees. They were at ease, yet alert--one held his rifle balanced on his shoulder. Their gaze was fixed peacefully on the black granite wall that was engraved with the names of the dead, the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial. At their feet, a dozen schoolchildren stood restlessly, listening to their teacher tell the story of a war that would never be more than a history lesson to them. 

************************

Warm late August sunshine washed across the rolling fields of southern Wisconsin. Harding gingerly lifted his injured foot, clumsily encased in plaster, and set it down outside the car. A few hundred yards away, in a fallow field of ripening grasses and wildflowers, Diefenbaker was loping along, stopping to sniff at the occasional stone or bush. Constable Fraser stood close by in an attitude of Parade Rest, his hands precisely clasped behind his back, patiently waiting for the wolf to finish his business and return to the car. 

They had been discussing the case that had brought them so far from Chicago. Stupid stuff, penny-ante vandalism mostly, but it constituted a crime wave in Willison.

Harding reached down and picked absent-mindedly at his pants leg, trying to adjust the slit fabric to better cover the plaster cast on his broken ankle. He swallowed, and discreetly moistened his lips as he prepared to change the subject. 

"Constable--can I ask your advice?"

"My advice, sir?" Fraser's voice was patient and even, showing only the barest hint of human curiosity.

Harding fought to match the constable's calm detachment. "If you had somebody you were trying to forgive, no matter how hard you tried to forgive him, you just couldn't forgive him. What would you do?" 

"Keep trying, sir."

************************

The wall began as thin wedge of polished black granite, like a long knife slicing a wound in the faded grass. As Harding followed his brother along the cobbled path that sloped steadily downward, he noticed that the wall's height increased even though its top edge remained fairly level. Ten yards down the path, the wall stood almost a foot and a half in height, and there the names began--a single row of five names at first:

JOHN H. ANDERSON JR + EARL E. BARNHART JR + JAMES E. BATES + GERRIT L. BLANKSMA + TED O. BRAZZEAL 

The second panel had three rows of names; the third, six; the fourth, eight. Harding stopped at the fifth panel, which was as high as his knees and carved with twelve rows of names. At the foot of the wall someone had left a single red carnation and a page of lined paper that had been torn from a spiral-bound notebook. He knelt on the cobbles and turned his head to read what was written on the page; a child's careful handwriting spelled out the title of a poem: "Believing." He suddenly felt that he had intruded on something intensely private and read no further, but stood and continued his journey down the path.

Other simple mementos marked his progress. More flowers, small flags, letters, photographs; a bottle of beer; a small white teddy bear dressed in miniature fatigues; souvenirs of the war, unit flags, regimental badges. Oddly enough, there was a 16 ounce can of fruit cocktail--Harding had three just like it in his pantry, bought on sale at the A&P for 89 cents each. The wall loomed taller with every step forward, until it towered over his head with more than a hundred rows of names.

At the bottom of the path, the wall angled to the right. In the panel in front of him, Harding was startled to see his own reflection in the granite. The thousands upon thousands of names had long since blurred into a numbing sea of half-recognized letters; now the letters themselves vanished into an illusion as the wall became a shadowed mirror of the here and now. It reflected the faces of the people who walked the path: children, parents, elders, the colors of their clothing muted but not eliminated by the dark surface. The grass was dark green, the sky royal blue, the approaching sunset blended from burnt orange to brick red to deepest purple.

He stood there for a while, studying the reflection as a more tolerable reality to the one that waited for him a few yards up the path. Wilson waited for him there, crouched down at the base of panel 14-E; he had already counted down 97 rows from the top of the panel to the place where his hand now rested. Harding inhaled the sharp, cold air, and went to join his brother. This could not be postponed any longer.

The name was in the middle of the row, near the bottom of the panel.

JAVIER M. VALDEZ + DONALD P. WEISS + GRANT T. WELSH + ROBERT B. WU + DAVID V. YOUNG + VICTOR L. ALBEE

"Buddy of yours?" A middle-aged man in faded fatigues approached Harding.

No reply.

"You've been staring at one spot on the wall for the last five minutes. People don't usually focus in that tight unless they're remembering somebody."

Silence.

"Hey, if you don't want to talk about it. . . ."

Wilson reluctantly pulled his hand away from the polished granite. "Brother," he said quietly.

The amicable stranger turned his attention away from Harding and looked over at Wilson. "Your brother?"

Harding finally found his voice, hesitant and hoarse. "Our brother," he corrected.

"Mmm. . . . Tet Offensive?"

Harding eyed the stranger warily. "How'd you know?"

"Almost all the names on this panel are men who died during Tet." The stranger stepped up to the wall, and brushed his fingertips across a name at waist level: MICHAEL T. ONTAKIN. "I lost some good friends in '68." He then crouched down beside Wilson and touched the star-shaped shield that Wilson had placed at the base of the wall. "This was his?"

Harding answered. "Officer Grant Welsh, Chicago P.D." 

"I didn't know him." The stranger sized up Wilson, who was now staring at distant portion of the memorial wall, where the names of the dead of a different year were inscribed. "Were you there?"

Wilson closed his eyes briefly while he remembered. He answered thoughtfully, "Yeah, I was there. I was an M.P. in Saigon. '69 and '70."

"Military Police?" he laughed. "Hey man, I'll try not to hold that against you."

Wilson grinned. "I appreciate that."

The stranger offered Wilson his hand. "Jim Ryder. 26th Marines, Khe Sahn '67, '68." 

Wilson shook it firmly, and smiled at his newfound friend. "Wilson Welsh, 18th Military Police."

Ryder turned to Harding, and asked, "How 'bout you? Did you serve?"

Harding heard, but did not answer; his eyes were still fixed on his older brother's name on the wall. 

\+ GRANT T. WELSH + 

He felt a twinge, as he had felt so many times before--a moment of phantom pain that spread across his jaw and neck from the site of the old injury at the base of his skull. 

The draft board had called his number in October of '68, while he was still on disability leave for the injuries he had suffered in the riot. The skull fracture and the crushed bones in his right hand had been enough to win him the coveted "4F" designation--medically unfit for military service--removing him from the danger of being drafted and releasing him from the pressure to volunteer. 

Sgt. Arthur C. Welsh, USA (ret.) never let him live it down.

Harding was about to mumble an explanation for his failure to bear arms for his country in Vietnam, when Wilson laid a cautionary hand on his shoulder and gently squeezed. "He served," said Wilson, placing emphasis on the second word. He repeated, "My brother Harding served and was wounded in the line of duty: Chicago, 1968."

************************

**Afterword**

If you've never had the opportunity to visit the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial in Washington DC, I encourage you to follow this link to a moving gallery of images of "The Wall" that was compiled by a retired sailor who goes by "Seadog." 

http://www.seadog-homeport.com/wall1.htm

Obviously "Chicago, 1968" was a work of fiction. The events that I described are not journalistic re-creations of what actually happened in Chicago in August of 1968, but are based in large part on descriptions of these events in the Walker Report. Daniel Walker and his panel interviewed hundreds of witnesses, studied thousands of still photographs and many hours of news footage of the riots, and issued their 230-page report on December 1, 1968. 

I have taken some liberties with the truth. This is what really happened on Wednesday, August 28, 1968 on Michigan Avenue outside the Haymarket Lounge, as described in the Walker Report:

While violence was exploding in the street, the crowd wedged behind the police sawhorses along the northeast edge of the Hilton was experiencing a terror all its own. Early in the evening, this group had consisted in large part of curious bystanders. But following the police surges into the demonstrators clogging the intersection [of Michigan and Balbo], protesters had crowded the ranks behind the [sawhorses] in their flight from the police. 

From force of numbers, this sidewalk crowd of 150 to 200 persons was pushing down toward the Hilton's front entrance. Policemen whose orders were to keep the entrance clear were pushing with sawhorses. Other police and fleeing demonstrators were pushing from the north in the effort to clear the intersection. Thus, the crowd was wedged against the hotel. . . .

Films show that one policeman elbowed his way to where he could rescue a girl of about ten years of age from the viselike press of the crowd. He cradled her in his arms and carried her to a point of relative safety 20 feet away. The crowd itself "passed up" an elderly woman to a low ledge. But many who remained were subjected to what they and witnesses considered deliberate brutality by the police.

"I was crowded in with the group of screaming, frightened people," an onlooker states. "We jammed against each other, trying to press into the brick wall of the hotel. As we stood there breathing hard. . . . a policeman calmly walked the length of the barricade with a can of chemical spray in his hand. Unbelievably, he was spraying at us." Photos reveal several policemen using Mace against the crowd. . . .

"Some of the police then turned and attacked the crowd," a Chicago reporter says. The student says she could see police clubbing persons pinned at the edge of the crowd and that there was "a great deal of screaming and pushing within the group." A reporter for a Cleveland paper said, "The police indiscriminately beat those of the periphery of the crowd. . . . "

As a result, a part of the crowd was trapped in front of the Conrad Hilton and pressed hard against a big plate glass window of the Haymarket Lounge. A reporter who was sitting inside said, "Frightened men and women banged. . . against the window. A captain of the fire department inside told us to get back from the window, that it might get knocked in. As I backed away a few feet I could see a smudge of blood on the glass outside."

With a sickening crack, the window shattered, and screaming men and women tumbled through, some badly cut by jagged glass. The police came after them.

"I was pushed through by the force of large numbers of people," one victim said. "I got a deep cut in my right leg, diagnosed later by Eugene McCarthy's doctor as a severed artery. . . . I fell to the floor of the bar. There were ten to twenty people who had come through. . . . I could not stand on the leg. I was bleeding profusely.

"A squad of policemen burst into the bar, clubbing all those who looked to them like demonstrators, at the same time screaming over and over, 'We've got to clear this area.' The police acted literally like mad dogs looking for objects to attack.

(From "Rights in Conflict: The Walker Report to the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence.") 

*****************************

Melanie Mitchell, February 25, 2000

If you enjoyed my story, or even if you didn't--please e-mail me at 

Melanie.m@erols.com


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